Randall Paul Jenkins, Esq. » Blog Archive

Long Beach is filled with dreamers. Not dreamers like you or I, but dreamers who digress towards an inappropriate dose of things that cannot be measured. Or so we should be so arrogant to believe.

I dream for success, for a certain level of fame so I can ignore it all with humility, for some plaque somewhere to loosely honour something I was vaguely affiliated with. They dream of the pasts they never had, the futures they never hope come, and the now, which most certainly cannot be their reality. So they slouch it off as they drive on sidewalks, with reckless abandon. Their cars are electric wheelchairs, their every day is some quartered version of the Long Beach Grand Prix.

Sometimes they yell at you from the sidewalks, the sidewalks which you cannot dare co-exist on. This is their town, they saw it broken, and it’s phoenix like rise will on day push them out, and only their stories told to switched off ears will remember how they went out kicking and screaming. They are there buying scratchers with change, every day buying scratchers with change. They have to play to win, and they need a few more addictions.

I have spent time with a few, the shoeless one, who always sprinted into my vicinity to ask for money after I foolishly handed out twenties one day. He used to live around here, his shoes are probably still there, his ex-girlfriend is still there, she is the one who got him thrown in jail. He grew to recognize my truck, I sold my truck, after several rebuttals of lies that I had no cash our friendship was renewed. He was moving on, he had found a job, he was finally getting back to where he had been on the edge of this place. He was never one of them at all.

They, being them, are a friendly lot mind you. They often wander up to use your shower, which is perfectly acceptable in what this town once was. Now it’s gates that actually lock half of the month, and intercom systems legible to all but without any connection to my name. Sometimes they even interact with you in an attempt to embrace the new, as I scouted out the location of the rest of us one of them saw me, and he answered back. I never asked him anything, but he answered “I’m doing good my man, keep on”. And you wonder if he felt like I was intimidated by him, like the new was scared the old would somehow violate the reality that he exists in. I never said a word.

I saw a man walking down the sidewalk at 4 AM, plain as can be, like he belonged there, like it was his normal stroll into the office, like it wasn’t 4 AM at all. It was, and it was bright as day at 4 AM, and I have no idea why this man was out, but I have no idea why I was awake to watch this through the window. They dream of things I was disappointed by, of things I forgot about, of things I wasted. They dream about things that I would never desire, they should never dream to be me.

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